Series: The Mind of God
Message: Thinking God’s Thoughts
Preacher: Mark Johnson
Refresh: Open with prayer. Read or listen to Psalm 33:1-9.
Read: 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 - As you read in the ESV translation, note 1-3 insights/questions that arise.
Reflect: My wife left some checks on the bottom stair the other day. She had gone to work, and was not there to tell me what to do with them. I picked them up, and used my best Sherlock Holmesian deductive powers. Each of them had been signed on one end of the reverse side, some in her handwriting, and some in her best counterfeit of my signature. They each contained this phrase: “For deposit in account ending in 2468.” I stood there wondering, “What does she want me to do with these checks? I wish she had mentioned them to me.”
I have been married to this woman for over 40 years. I, therefore, have many memories of decisions of mine that have gone badly. So I stood there anxiously thinking, “What to do? What to do?” This is, of course, a rather silly story. I knew exactly what to do. I picked them up and put them on the kitchen table for her to deal with when she got home. It’s much better in marriage to leave things alone than to take a chance and end up doing the wrong thing. No. Of course, that’s not what I did. Instead, I crossed out the “2468” and wrote “3164” (my account number) on them and deposited them in the bank. Not really. I “thought her thoughts after her.” It is common for folks who have been married for a long time, or for longtime friends, to know what the other one is thinking without saying a word. Is it possible to know what God is thinking – to think God’s thoughts after Him?
Noah is probably my favorite example in the Bible of someone whom I think thought God’s thoughts after Him. After 120 years of building and preaching, God shut Noah and his family up in the ark with a plethora of animals, and sent a flood. What was that all about? As a boy, I figured God saved a bunch of them because they were the ones that were going to get eaten. But Noah, I now believe, was thinking God’s thoughts after Him. After the flood was past, and he and his family were let out of the ark, Noah took the seventh of each of those clean animals and sacrificed them to the Lord as a thank offering for his and his family’s safety and survival. There is no evidence that God asked him to do that, but I believe that’s exactly what God was thinking when He loaded the ark with the animals. Read Genesis 8:21, 9:1.
Recalibrate:
Respond: Pray for the knowledge of God.
Research: Can you think of other Biblical stories where someone apparently thought God’s thoughts after Him?